Supporters vote for clear-out at HQ as RFU begin inquest into World Cup failure

A sizeable straw poll of England rugby fans has given their damning verdict on Martin Johnson and his coaching staff long before the numerous reviews on the World Cup failure deliver their findings.

There were around 700 supporters on the official England Rugby Travel trip at a question- and-answer evening with rugby celebrities in the Rydges Hotel in Auckland on the eve of the semi-final weekend.

The host, Nick Mullins, asked the audience for their views on the future of Johnson and his assistants following their exit from the tournament which occurred before some of the England followers had even arrived in New Zealand.

Looking for leadership: Supporters want a clear-out at the RFU

And the overwhelming opinion in the show of hands — with only a few against — was for a mass clear-out at Twickenham, with calls from the floor that the current performance chief Rob Andrew should go as well. This landslide vote from England’s core rugby faithful has been the talk of the RFU top brass in Auckland — adding to their concerns about the changes needed.

Everyone's got a story to tell

The extent of the wholesale breakdown
in England player behaviour during the World Cup can be gauged by so
many people in New Zealand now dining out with tales about a lawless
team tarnishing the image of English rugby.

The boatman who guided the squad’s
craft when they went whitewater rafting on the South Island has been
regaling tourists about how he felt intoxicated just breathing in the
alcohol fumes of the players the morning after that momentous drunken
night out in Queenstown.

Woodward's return

If any more omens were needed for Sir Clive Woodward’s seemingly inevitable return to Twickenham as England overlord, try his arrival in Auckland for the semi-finals and final, staying in the same hotel that Martin Johnson’s doomed squad departed a week ago.

Woodward, whose spectre has hung over the whole RFU meltdown, is in New Zealand as a guest of the IRB as a former World Cup-winning manager. His presence gives the RFU high command an ideal chance in the long week before the final to at least start talking to him about the best way forward to prepare for the 2015 tournament.

The major obstacle blocking Woodward’s
comeback would be his own scepticism about a dysfunctional organisation
that has twice rejected him for the elite performance role.

Coming back: Sir Clive Woodward is expected to rejoin the RFU

Club backs bad boys

World Cup poster bad boys Mike
Tindall, who has played his last England game, and Samoan Eliota
Fuimaono-Sapolu, who claims he’s retiring after being given a six-month
ban suspended for two years for his Twitter rantings, are both wanted
back urgently by Gloucester.

And despite their New Zealand
shenanigans, the owner of the injury-hit Premiership club, Ryan
Walkinshaw, has backed them. He said: ‘What’s happened during the World
Cup has no bearing on their club.’

Meanwhile, Fuimaono-Sapolu, who has
raged against authority throughout the tournament, is said to have
welcomed having to pass a recognised referee course, calling it a ‘magic
idea’ while his 100 hours of community work in Samoa is one way for the
IRB to show him their rugby development on the Pacific island.

Come back: Mike Tindall is wanted back by his Premiership club Gloucester

In a League on their own

Premiership rugby leaders Quentin Smith and Mark McCafferty — who apologised to host nation New Zealand about the England team’s misconduct ‘in the absence of any contrition’ from the RFU — have taken the deep friction between English clubs and country to a new level.

Smith’s stance is seen as a ‘bit rich to say the least’ by the RFU camp because he led a group of rugby powerbrokers who were fighting the decision for the 2011 World Cup to go to New Zealand.

They believed it should have been awarded to Japan instead as an emerging nation with far more commercial potential.

Solicitor Smith, who headed the sports practice at Manchester law firm Addleshaw at the time, wrote to the IRB wanting more clarification about the 2011 vote done by secret ballot, before the attempt to take the tournament away from New Zealand was shelved.

Smith said: ‘I thought Japan should have staged the event, but that was back in 2005 and things have moved on since then.’